


Wings of Feather and Wax

by Psyga315



Category: 22nd Century CE RPF, Original Work
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Contest Entry, Destruction, Gen, Minor Mentions of Death, Quantum Computers, Spaceships, black holes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-17 03:07:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21047270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Psyga315/pseuds/Psyga315
Summary: Humanity has always wanted to touch the sun ever since man made wings of feather and wax... Even more so once they had created the UESS "Leif Eriksson" with the intent to discover indigenous planets.Of course, they should have paid more attention to the story of the wax & feather wings, for it told of how hubris could destroy them...





	Wings of Feather and Wax

The Leif Eriksson. It was Earth’s finest creation at the tail end of the 22st century and was launched near the end of October 2197. To think that a powerful spacecraft that could help accelerate space exploration was made entirely on some internet forum dedicated to debating which ship was the best.

The people who drew up the blue prints and schematics, Nathan Rubric and a person who went under the pseudonym of ANTICarrot, had the creation outlive them, but thankfully, their memories were preserved as artificial intelligence, Nathan being the auto-pilot while ANTICarrot would be the security. While AI has never truly hit singularity like many had feared, quantum computing had become so common place, that all it takes are a few qubit calculations to “simulate” an actual person.

The aim of the Leif Eriksson was simple: like the namesake, its goal was to find its own version of “North America”, a place in the galaxy full of indigenous life for which the ship could settle on. Afterwards, UESA would utilize smaller versions of the Leif Eriksson to transport people to that planet to effectively colonize it.

Of course, like with many stories of advanced technology, mankind’s hubris is their belief that they can touch the sun with wings of feather and wax. All it takes for that dream to fall apart is one simple mishap.

In their case, it was a stray asteroid that knocked off two of the six main arms of the ship. Without a full functioning fuel collector, the ship slowly consumed more fuel than it gained. It wasn’t a problem at first, but once crew noticed that half of the fuel tanks were already empty and that fueling up was a zero-sum game, panic erupted…

ANTICarrot, oddly enough made in the shape of a small, rabbit-like droid, rolled around the emptied hall of the Leif Eriksson. It was fifty years since the asteroid impacted the ship’s arms. And yet, for ANTICarrot and his friend, it was merely five seconds. The only indicator that time passed was the odd speed bump.

_Damn,_ ANTICarrot thought, _Ran over another one…_ The wheels kicked up the powdery remains of what was once bone as ANTICarrot passed by a skeleton, now without an arm. Thankfully, there weren’t much littering the ship, but the lack of any AI janitors made it frustrating for the security droid. ANTICarrot took the time to look outside the window and look at the vast openness of space, but also notice how, as the ship’s hulls rotated, he noticed the broken arms that spelled doom for this ship, as well as the missing escape pods.

_Stupid humans…_ _There were enough pods for everyone… _ANTICarrot muttered. He tapped into his central network to tell the cleaning AI to take care of the recent skeleton while he went to see Nathan. The most they can do is see if dilithium crystals were a thing.

ANTICarrot made a quick check up inside the shuttle hangar. There, he saw two large tubes. Falcon 18 Shuttles, perhaps the greatest invention that Elon Musk had concepted, though, like ANTICarrot, he didn’t live long to see his magnum opus come to fruition.

ANTICarrot quietly sighed as he moved on from the hangar. His wheels squeaked a bit as he noticed the slippery, frozen floor. He noticed the room next to him was the cryonics bay. As ANTICarrot went in to investigate, he immediately backed out. Pipes that were meant to freeze people to the point of deep sleep had burst and he had a good idea that he’d be stepping into a meat factory rather than peacefully sleeping crew members.

A shame, really. Most of the crew, rather than scramble to escape their fate, chose to sleep it away in the hopes that the problem magically fixes itself. The most that the AIs could do, however, was send drones to assess the surroundings and point the problem to humans who were capable of handling it. Though, ANTICarrot also had pity for the humans. He continued on his trip to the main bridge where Nathan would be. He already knew what the first thing he’ll say to him will be.

* * *

“Why did you make this ship so goddamn long!?” ANTICarrot asked a large computer monitor that encompassed the main window of the ship. The window soon shifted to the face of Nathan Rubric, dressed up as an Imperial from the Star Wars series.

“So we can make a literal tube flying through space!” He chuckled.

“Your sense of humor _amazes_ me…” ANTICarrot muttered. “There’s also the distinct _lack_ of humans on our ship. What do we do about that?” ANTICarrot asked.

“As per directive 219 of the UESA’s AI Code, our mission is declared a failure and as such, we must return to Earth to effectively go back to the drawing board.” Nathan said.

“Yeah, easier said than done with the fuel being so low.” ANTICarrot said.

“Indeed. FTL travel back to Earth will prove to be difficult, if not outright impossible. Our only hope now is to send a distress beacon and leave the rest in the hands of others.” There was a pause between ANTICarrot and Nathan.

“We’re stuck in the middle of nowhere! Our Drones haven’t come back with anything useful! Do you really expect anyone to come save us?” ANTICarrot asked.

“I don’t expect. I _believe_.” Nathan said.

“Well, I don’t. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re the only ones left! I doubt anyone is able to detect our presence in the ship. They’ll just pass us off as an abandoned ship and leave us. And that’s not considering the foreign aliens and even space pirates.” ANTICarrot scoffed and went over to look at the star map. “We don’t even know where we are.”

“Well, from my calculations, we’re in Messier 87.” Nathan turned a second window into a map detailing where the ship was.

“So, literally nowhere. In fact, the only thing worth noting about it is…” ANTICarrot stopped, then looked outside. It seemed odd that the stars seemed to be aligned in an odd donut-style curve or even how time seemed to flow oddly for them. At first, he passed it off as something that only a robot experiences, but he now knew what’s happening… “You madman!”

“In my defense, I didn’t realize the FTL would drop us right in front of a massive black hole!” Nathan said.

“So what now!? It’s only a matter of time before we get into its event horizon…” ANTICarrot said.

“Well… There is _one_ way…” Nathan said as ANTICarrot heard the hum of the Mammoth Heavy engines and the whine of the wings folding in on themselves.

“What are you doing?” ANTICarrot shook its rabbit-like shell back and forth.

“There’s enough juice for one last jump. Let’s keep going…” Nathan said.

“You’re crazy! We’re going to die!” ANTICarrot said.

“Or… Maybe… We might get out of this alive…” Nathan said as the last thing ANTICarrot heard was the thwoosh sound of the engines. Within a second, time resumed to what it once was, with the only caveat being the long stretch. ANTICarrot was blessed to not be able to feel pain, even as his quantum computers, in their last moments, tried to convey and emulate that sense.

The only thing ANTICarrot _could_ sense was seeing his own chassis dragged out and stretched, as though he were a simple image in Photoshop. ANTICarrot felt more and more stretched and then…

Compressed. ANTICarrot, Nathan, the ship that housed their AI, the people who froze to death waiting for a new dawn, the people whose corpses littered the halls, all smashed together into, not just one being, but rather one _dot_, one singularity. So densely packed were Nathan and ANTICarrot that they were unable to communicate. They were now part of the hole.

Or at least… That was what the quantum computers believed would happen…

* * *

**SMASH!**

ANTICarrot was surprised to have been intact, along with everything else, including the ship itself. Though, he was more surprised with the thick shattered glass that danced around the Leif Eriksson, on top of what looked to be light _escaping_ from the black hole…

“What the…” Before ANTICarrot’s computer could come up with an answer, he saw lights that were brighter than even Las Vegas’s, tall skyscrapers, and a thriving ecology of trees and animals. The only oddity was that the land below was curved like the stars at the ring of the hole… Though, looking at the big picture, he saw why…

The land below them _was_ a ring.

“We… We did it, Nathan… We… We discovered indigenous land!” ANTICarrot’s seldom-seen cheer soon died down as he saw a ship, mostly spherical not unlike a pod, flying towards them. A welcoming party perhaps, or maybe even scavengers. ANTICarrot assumed the latter based off an old line…

Nine out of ten times, ships floating in space with no purpose are full of dead aliens and free shit.

“Well, time to meet the neighbours… Here’s hoping they’re not like the Skrælings.” Nathan mused as the ship came closer…

It was time to make first contact.


End file.
